Jeff Gillan Graphic DesignStrategic Graphic Design: Engaging your client with effective logo design and branding
Your professional identity is vital to the success of your business and is the prime tool with which you capture the attention of your intended customer base. As a professional graphic designer and artworker with over 20 years prime industry experience, catering for the design interests of household retail names as well as FT100 corporate organisations, I am ideally placed to help you realise your business design vision.
My focussed and strategic approach will distil the essence of your business proposition and clearly promote who you are and what you offer to the widest possible audience. It will help you:
- Improve marketing performance and your advertising return on investment
- Increase both mass appeal as well as targeted appeal for a specific client group or prime customer base
- Engage a more lucractive clientele and, if appropriate, reposition your offering away from the budget market
- Convey your message to your prospective clients quickly and effectively
- Give your new venture the strongest possible start with the presence of an established business
- Clearly differentiate you from your competitors
Improving your businesses visual identity will give you a competitive advantage over your rivals: it can reduce the need to compete with them purely on price, and can quickly remodel your business as a successful and higher-quality alternative within the market.
At a time when your competitors may be cutting corners, investing in the visual quality of your business can pay instant dividends, and by engaging a professional – rather than a ‘make do’ approach of using the cheapest available alternative – you can guarantee the success of this investment, and in turn your business.
There is no second chance to make a first impression: So make yours count.
By making a relatively small investment in my professional design approach, you could ensure a long-term positive effect on the success of your business…and make certain that the crucial first impression of your company is both memorable and favourable.
When it comes to converting potential business into real customers or contracts, a positive first impression may be the deciding factor. In an increasingly fast-paced commercial market, a potential customer can evaluate the quality of your business by its visual representation in seconds. The logo and branding, the imagery used and overall layout, balance and tone of your communication is every bit as important as your product or your sales pitch and can directly affect the perceived value of your product or fees. This is especially true of businesses that offer an open-ended fee based service as well as those who offer a fixed price product.
To use e-commerce as an example of an impression forming medium – your website is crucial in engendering customer retention and interest. Users will quickly decide whether or not you are a serious, professional business that has clearly understood what potential customers want and expect in terms of look-and-feel: navigability, clarity of text, ease of use and layout. Poor quality design, counter-intuitive navigation, naïve or haphazard layouts will discourage the visitor and increase ‘bounce-rates’, where potential customers make snap decisions based on frustration or disinterest in the site and leave within seconds, without even absorbing any of the details of your proposition.
With increasingly strong online competition, a keen price is no longer enough, and if your website and business identity are not up to scratch, you may lose the opportunity to even make your pitch.
The advantage of using a professional designer to help create the right impression
Aside from the business or company name itself, a logo is often the starting point for any corporate identity or brand. It must quickly and simply communicate a memorable image of your business; it must be original but also recognisable, free from complex illustration or clichés that may risk alienating, offending or patronising potential customers or be viewed as derivative of another company’s identity. It must work in harmony with your product or service, and underline the uniqueness of your proposition. It is not just decoration.
The design must be correctly pitched to speak directly to your target market – part of my duty as a professional designer is to ensure that my work is optimised for success within the appropriate business sector, with carefully planned levels of sophistication, gravitas or even lightness of touch and stripped-down simplicity that a product or service can demand. Remember, a design that appeals to your target market may not equate to the personal taste of the individual, hence the need for the professional judgment and guidance that I provide.
Working with me: Business Communications with a communications business
- Direct communication at all times
- Optimising your brief
- Guidance and support throughout the process
- Extensive industry experience
- Agile and flexible, multi-faceted approach
- Attention to detail
- Commitment to mutual success
If design is about communicating with prospective clients more effectively, then it follows that I consider communication with my clients of paramount importance during the design process. As an independent designer, I never outsource any aspect of my projects; I ensure accountability by working personally with my clients, operating direct lines of communication unfettered by account managers, sales staff or customer service personnel – I am never further away than a telephone call or email. Most importantly, I listen to what you have to say. I regard my clients as partners in the design process – not passengers.
I can provide the reassurance that my holistic design approach – from discussing, compiling and refining an initial brief; the advice and support to help you identify your goals, to consider your market and competitor base; working with you to agree a project strategy; and the industry-honed experience that goes into conceptualising and realizing your design vision; and finally embedding your new business identity throughout your communications – is a tailor-made process, personally managed and unique for you and your business.
This uniqueness is key if your business identity is to be effective and stand out amongst your competitors, and my creative process is tailored to each client to ensure the individuality of each design. My studio is not a production line of similar ‘designs’ which are offered to every visiting client for the price of lunch, and I offer rationale and explanation for each design I present – I don’t send random images without meaning and leave the client sole responsibility to choose what they think might be effective for their business.
This combination of expertise, creativity and guidance is what sets a professional apart from the glut of amateur and mass-produced ‘anti-design’ that currently floods the market.
I’m passionate about all areas of business design and this shows in my proven ability to equip clients from all over the world, in all sectors of business and all stages of corporate development – from start-ups to established brands – with effective and successful design – from true ‘blank-slate’ design and strategic marketing guidance for hundreds of new business clients, to remodeling established branding and putting a fresh spin on the whole gamut of web or paper based design. My considered and multi-faceted approach – for example, combining traditional pencil sketching with the latest industry-standard design software – and the time and commitment I will invest in understanding you and your business’s unique elements, will combine to ensure the development of intelligent solutions with artistry, individuality, rationale and wit that stand up to any scrutiny.
I’d like to invite you to peruse my portfolio for some samples of my recent work, including client comments and rationale behind the designs. A portfolio is always the benchmark of any designer and I hope the quality of work is evident and meets your approval.